60 Percent
by pinksnowboots
Summary: "Rin kissed him so deeply that Haruka swore he could reach out and steal the water in his body from his throat, moaned like the crash of waves when Haruka bit his shoulder and tasted the water in his blood." Haruka judges his happiness by how experiences compare to swimming free (100% content). People don't get above 60%. RinHaru


On average, 60% of a human body is water, but that wasn't enough for Haruka Nanase (of course it wasn't, it was never enough).

In fact, it seemed as though that 60% had only served to whet his appetite for the stuff, every molecule in his body, every fiber of his being calling out for more contact, every thought and action coupled with the now-instinctual location of the nearest water source whether it be ocean or fishbowl, because he had long since learned that being in a room without water caused the energy in his body to revolt, twitching and twisting until the only thing that kept him sane were the swimming trunks he always wore and the reassurance that he was water, 60% to be precise.

The 60% became a mantra with which to deal with the obsession, then morphed into a system defining levels of pleasure. Everything was relative to water and the sheer delight that it gave him, and anything that didn't involve it in some way, shape, or form could never raise his pleasure to more than 60%.

100% was the feeling of swimming in a clean, clear pool. Marking his own speed, no racing, no timers, no competition, just himself and the water. Feeling the water outside of him and inside of him, the 60% of himself radiating joy at being reunited with its kin and the remaining 40% quickly following suit. Sometimes he even felt jealous of his skin cells sloughing off to become even more fully enveloped in its embrace, but the jealousy wasn't too bad until he had to drag himself out and leave them behind.

100% was swimming free.

Anything else that gave him pleasure was measured in his mind, in what shade of swimming it reminded him of. Did this moment compare to the first impact (100%), when the water rushed up to meet him and embrace him completely, yielding and resisting, welcoming and refusing. Or was it more like having to drag himself out of and away from the water (0%, only salvaged by the promise of coming again) as one would from a cajoling lover, wrenching both body and mind with the utmost of efforts to try to avoid so much as a wistful glance. Those experiences were the guideposts of Haruka's emotional spectrum and they served as the metric for everything in between.

Makoto was 60%, the highest a mere person could be. He could not be more than 60% water, but he utilized every last bit of it, and his small talk and persistent smile pleased Haruka more than any other person save his grandmother, the only human to rise above 60% on this scale (she was 95%, on par with ocean swimming and well above soaking in the bath). And while this number seemed low, it was in fact a credit to Makoto and his friendship, and the fact that Haruka often seemed distracted and displeased was more to do with his constant and compulsive longing than with any deficits in Makoto's character.

Nagisa was more like 40% (50 on a good day). Not to say that he didn't enjoy the boy's company, but he enjoyed it half as much as he did swimming, and that's if Nagisa was being calm at the time. But when he turned his boundless energy and relentless persistence to making the swim club a reality, finally recruiting Rei, Haruka was 72% pleased, the 60% mark shattering in light of the promise of a potential to swim, and to swim more.

Rei was a solid 50%-he was pleasant company, if a bit strange, and his genuine admiration for the beauty of swimming was a credit to him. Although the first disastrous attempts at swimming had been painful to watch (10%, and that was why Haruka didn't help with the teaching at first, until it became unbearable), seeing Rei swim his first full lap of butterfly had been an 85% moment, and for once, all of the swim club was ecstatic.

Other things and people fluctuated on the scale. Gou (no, Kou-her displeasure at the mistakes dropped her percentage considerably) hovered at 45%, Amakata-sensei clocked in at 30%, significantly higher if he made himself think about her contribution the swim club.

Sitting in the bathtub was 80%. Decent, but not nearly as satisfying as being in a body of water where he could actually swim a decent distance (interestingly enough, Haruka hated showers. The constant downward motion of the water droplets reminded him of leaving the water. He liked to be enveloped, not skimmed).

The exception to all of these rules was Rin. (And thinking about it, wasn't Rin always the exception? Hadn't beating him all those years ago been the only thing to drop below 0%?)

And by rights, he shouldn't be. Rin was nothing like water. Water was welcoming, Rin was prickly. Water was constant, Haruka's anchor, but Rin flared like fire and burst into fits of rage and life, only to be doused just as quickly and disappear, fading into ashes that could be washed away by the merest stream. Rin was not dependable, not comforting, not calm or predictable or safe.

And yet…

And yet Rin rose and ebbed like the ocean waves before a storm, he was relentless as the tide which wears down the mountain, as insistent as a rainstorm, seeking out every crack and every chink through which to channel his downpour. He was placid as a mountain lake and treacherous as the whitewater on rivers, as familiar to Haruka as the pool of their old swim club (now empty, now gone) and as alien as the training grounds that had welcomed Rin in Australia.

Rin was 60% water, but he may as well have been the Earth as far as Haruka was concerned (containing more water than Haruka's mind could comprehend and possessing a strong gravitational pull). And if he was the Earth, Haruka was the moon, parched and barren, constantly orbiting, wistfully staring at the oasis of a planet, yet never getting close than controlling its tides (and he could control Rin's tides, he knew that despite rarely seeing him).

One day, the Earth pulled the moon close, and all his oceans overflowed.

(Rin kissed him so deeply that Haruka swore he could reach out and steal the water in his body from his throat, moaned like the crash of waves when Haruka bit his shoulder and tasted the water in his blood. Rin's fingers lit his skin on fire and doused the sparks in one brush, and every breath in his ear was a stream. Rin enveloped him, and yet it was he who consumed, greedily, until he was sure that he had left nothing but a husk. But throughout the onslaught, though his hair and his eyes remained aflame, everything else was pure water, and it washed over Haruka like a waterfall.)

Haruka compared everything to water. Everything. Swimming free was 100%, and people couldn't get above 60, but when Rin dove into Haruka, it was swimmingandfreedomandwaterandwavesandOhGodRin and the old scale dissolved, particles mingling and swirling with the cast-off pieces of their skin in the old Iwatobi pool.


End file.
